Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [54]
After a time he finishes, quickly stowing the sheaf of paper in his satchel. He turns to me and reaches out a hand toward the taper, but as he does a gust of wind enters through the cracks in the wall and chokes the flame, leaving us in total darkness. I gasp and the taper drops from my hand, and then there is nothing but the sound of our breaths intertwined in the blackness. I feel his hand take mine.
“I am here,” he says quietly.
His voice floats across the space, does not come or go but hovers all around us. And then he steps forward until his body is just next to mine, and I can sense the smell of him, and feel the warmth of his flesh. I turn my face until it is only a fraction from his own, then feel his lips brush lightly against my forehead. I raise my chin to find him in the darkness, can think of nothing but finding it: the warm, dark center that is him. And then I feel his mouth on mine and I am swimming in his skin, until suddenly, unwillingly, I hear the scrabble of the door and see a thin shaft of light reach across to where we stand.
I turn and trace it back unto its source: a beacon in my mother’s hand.
She stares at us from the open door, her eyes like pinpricks of anger. Her face shimmers eerily in the half-light of the beacon in her hand. I see a movement behind her and Samuell steps forward from the shadow of the doorway, his expression confused. In one quick movement the painter and I separate, and we are suddenly two strangers in a room with a corpse.
“How came you here?” says Samuell sharply.
“It is my fault,” I say quickly. “I wanted to look upon her one last time.” Samuell looks from me to the painter and back again. I keep my eyes upon his face, avoid my mother’s scrutiny.
“What of him?” he asks after a moment. I hesitate before replying, but the painter intervenes.
“I asked to see,” he says quickly. “The dead are of interest to one of my trade.”
“She is not some curiosity at the fair,” says Samuell.
“Forgive me,” says the painter.
“You can ask the Lord’s forgiveness. It is not mine to give,” says Samuell. Just then a man’s voice shouts for him in the yard. He hesitates, then looks at me.
“We’ll not be long,” I say. He slips out the door, leaving me to face her in the flickering light.
“Mother,” I say after a moment. “Are you all right?” She nods then, slowly.
“I’ve come to pay my last respects,” she says finally. She looks only at me, does not acknowledge the painter’s presence.
“The boy?” I ask.
“He sleeps,” she says. And then, still looking only at me, her voice as hard as flint: “He has no right to be here.”
The painter steps forward. “I am not a voyeur,” he says, his voice polite but firm. I raise a hand to quiet him, see the shadow of a frown cross his face.
“He is carrying out a commission for my master,” I say slowly. “A portrait. Of her.” My mother silently considers this.
“It is not right,” she says finally, and I can see from the set of her jaw that there is nothing I can say to change her mind. A that moment I am poised between the three of them: my mother, the dead woman, and the painter, and struggle not to lose myself within their triangle.
“It is time we left,” I say, beckoning toward the painter. I cross the room and slip out the door, past my mother’s motionless anger.
Once outside I walk briskly toward the kitchen door. “Wait here,” I tell the painter, and I go inside to give Mary the keys. She gives me an admonishing look.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“ ’Twas devilish luck,” she replies. I smile and slip back out the door.
The painter waits for me, but I cannot read his expression. We cross the alehouse yard in silence, and when we reach the road he turns to me.
“I do not understand her anger,” he says stiffly. “A portrait is harmless enough.” I stop short and turn to him, consider my reply. It is not easy to explain my mother’s actions, and yet I would not have expected anything but her response, for I know her mind as well as my own.
“It is the idea of it that offends